Bitter and I went to walk two neighborhoods today on behalf of Tom Corbett, Pat Toomey, and Dee Adcock for the the Montgomery County GOP, who are running NRA endorsed candidates for all the major offices. At this point the GOP is just trying to get the candidates out in front of voters, and survey them to find out what their hot button issues are. Of all the volunteer work we do, walking neighborhoods has to be my least favorite activity, especially then the temperature is above 90 degrees. But it’s necessary work. We reached about 80 voters today in our walk.
The campaigns are starting with soft Republicans. Soft being defined as either people who haven’t voted in every election, or new voters who don’t have much of a record. The idea is to try to influence their vote while they haven’t heard much about the candidates. It’s much easier to help bring them around to a candidate now, than to try to change their minds later.
So what do we know from our work so far? Suburban Philadelphia soft Republicans are not a fan of the health care reform. I only had one guy say he was in favor of it, and one guy who said “There are some things I like, and some things I don’t like.” Everyone else was against Obamacare, even the young people we spoke to.
There’s no love for Allyson Schwarz among soft Republicans in the neighborhood we walked in Montgomery Township, even in households that had an open mind about Sestak and Onorato. One split household, where the husband was a Republican and the wife was a Democrat, the Democrat wife said she would never vote for Schwartz because she was against an issue important to her. That’s not to say Dee Adcock doesn’t have an uphill battle, but there’s a base of discontent there with Schwartz even among marginal GOP voters. That’s not good for Schwartz. This is going to be a very interesting election year.
So when you canvas “soft Republicans,” what happens to the registered Democrats likely to vote for Republicans? There’s where I fall in. Registered Democrat for almost 40 years, but I have not voted for a Democrat since Jimmie Carter. And, as Ronald Reagan said, “It only hurts once.”
I remain registered as a Democrat to influence who the Democratic candidate is. In my state, unfortunately, it’s usually a Democrat who will win in the November election.
The last time a Democratic Party canvasser knocked on my door, I said I would never again vote for a Dem unless the Dems openly disassociated themselves with Bill Clinton and his pro-partial-birth-abortion policies.
After Obama and Obamacare and “time to redistribute the wealth,” I’d likely tell someone from the Dem Party to get the blankety-blank off my property.
So, what does the Republican Party do to reach me and others like me? Is there any way you can even tell who we are to reach out to us?
I imagine that it probably depends on the resources of the state and local parties. This is also to see if any of the softer Republicans are interested in volunteering. Surprisingly, some of the ones I called the other night agreed to do it – at about the rate I would expect from hardcore Republicans.